


Drag Me to Hell

by shipcat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Animal Death, Dissociative and self-destructive behavior, Escaped Prisoners, Hallucinations, Heat Stroke, Hidan is bad at deserts and you should not follow his example, It gets dark, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Modern AU, Pining in a Relationship, Relationship Tension, Specifically Rattlesnakes, There is a Good Reason Hidan was on Death Row, Unreliable narrator may be seeing things, cursing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipcat/pseuds/shipcat
Summary: Sometime between causing a prison riot, jumping over a chain linked fence, and running for five days straight, Hidan had come to two conclusions: First, that his ankle was broken in several places; and second, that Kakuzu’s hand would fit perfectly in his.





	1. Pruno

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mayblume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mayblume/gifts).



> It's been a while, hasn't it?
> 
> Previously posted on Tumblr. Uploaded here to celebrate KakuHidaWeek 2018; final chapter TBA on October 9. 
> 
> EDIT: Final chapter will have to wait a bit, as I have a new job and a freshly adopted kitten (and unexpected) to attend to in real life.

The sun beats down on Hidan’s head, bleaching his hair white. His scalp burns with UV radiation, skin peeling from the top of his skull down the back of his neck, pink in all the places that his stolen wife beater doesn’t cover. His skin itches like it wants to crawl off of his body and burrow deep into the dirt.

Kakuzu doesn’t need to look at him to know what he is thinking. “Don’t scratch,” he says, voice muffled by the bandana covering his mouth and nose.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, ‘kuzu.” He rakes his nails down his shoulder, teeth catching on a relieved groan as he rips off a thin white layer of skin. He throws it away before his companion can see, but Kakuzu notices anyways.

“Stop that.” His eyes flash with promises of infection. “And keep moving.”

Each step adds another stitch to his side, another ache in his left leg. Grains of dirt part before Hidan, seeping into his torn up sneakers and rubbing into his blisters. Pain, pain, that’s all he can focus on. And the itching _._ Fuck—the _itching_. It takes everything in him not to run to the nearest cactus to flay himself. For a hazy second—hour? minute? Hidan is almost certain that he died in prison. As hot as it is, as distant as Kakuzu is acting, surely this must be hell.

They trudge onward, wildlife scattering in their wake. Lizards peek out from the arid soil, blink lazily, and retreat back into the earth just as slowly. A desert fox pokes its head from a hole, sees them, and scampers away, wary of the predators with their prison-orange pants.

Hidan leers at the fox. Swishes around the grains of sand with his tongue. His mouth would water if it could. “Move, move, move. When are we gonna eat?”

“We will eat when we get to the border.” Kakuzu doesn’t look at the fox. He doesn’t look at Hidan, either. “Now shut up.”

“I didn’t get to eat before we left, you know. And isn’t that a cryin’ shame? I’m weeping here, seriously.” He gestures at his tearless face to no applause. Kakuzu continues to stalk between the scraggly vegetation, Hidan chattering after him all the while.

“I think, being on death row and all, I deserve a meal. In fact, I’m super fucking sure that it is my constitutional right to eat a _minimum_ of 18 ounces of meat before I die. Considering I gave that up to bust you out, you owe me some food. And no, the gross crickets and Slim Jims you’ve been shoving down my throat don’t count. I’m talking _real_ food. Prime cut, USDA-approved, ninety perfect lean, all-American beef _._ Kakuzu, you owe me some fucking steak. It’s the law.”

Kakuzu glances at him then, jaw tightening under his bandana.

“I mean, I’m not an attorney but I had a lawyer once, so same difference, right? Though he was kind of a shit lawyer, seeing as I was found guilty…”

“You’re rambling.”

“So what?”

“So it’s time for a break.”

Moving to the shade of a gnarled shrub, Kakuzu kicks the sand away, sending several light brown scorpions skittering away, and sits. He lifts his bandana up and takes a small swig of water. His throat bobs as he swallows.

Hidan flops next to his ex-cellmate, gaze glassy and unfocused. The next thing he knows, there is a canteen in his face. Kakuzu is glaring at him, scowl split from thirst and irritation.

“Sip.”

“But I’m hungry, not thirsty.” Hidan pastes a seductive smile on his face. Pretends not to be bothered by the way Kakuzu shrinks away from his touch. “You should give me something to eat instead…”

_“Sip.”_

His face falls.

“I’ve had pruno that tasted better than this crap,” Hidan mutters, snatching the water away.

Nearby, the beady black eyes of a scorpion watch as Kakuzu turns his back to his ex-cellmate. Neither of them say a word.


	2. Tattoos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Law enforcement is in hot pursuit, and Hidan is hotter than Kakuzu would prefer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some mild sexual content in this chapter. Nothing too explicit.

* * *

 

The day passes; the sun is still just as merciless. They are now out in the open desert, hurrying by cacti and tumbleweeds to get to a mesa about half an hour away. Their eyes burn as they squint at shapes in the cloudless blue sky, trying to differentiate between vultures and helicopters. Hidan does not know which one is worse; Kakuzu is sure it’s the second.

“This used to be my dumping ground. There is no one around,” Kakuzu tells Hidan. He likes to talk a lot about the glory days.

Hidan heaves a sigh and drags himself forward. “No one alive, you mean.” His ankle swells with each step he takes. He imagines skeletons buried somewhere under his feet, and it makes the journey slightly more bearable. 

Kakuzu knows the terrain like the back of his hand—or claims to, anyway. Hidan is pretty fucking positive he has tripped over the same half-buried boulder five times before.

At this point, Hidan knows Kakuzu’s hands better than he does. He has spent nights mapping those hands, around his throat, between his thighs. They are tanned, large, with trickling blue vessels winding their way around his knuckles like a creek around a mountain, down into the larger veins in his wrists. 

Kakuzu’s hands are just like the desert, Hidan thinks. There are bones under the surface. They are vast, deadly, and could use some fucking moisturizer, especially when Kakuzu grabs Hidan and drags him towards the mesa, complaining of a buzzing noise. Hidan winces as his foot hits a rock.

“You’re just going nuts, old man,” he complains, more for Kakuzu’s comfort than his own. Kakuzu would rather die than go back to prison, while Hidan would rather die, period. “Maybe this isn’t real, and we are still in in jail. Maybe you’re in isolation again, dreaming all this up. Maybe I’m just a sexy figment of your shitty imagination, and you never even met the real me. Is my name Hidan? Who are you, even?” 

Kakuzu squeezes his arm so hard that it almost breaks. “Don’t even start.” 

“I’m not starting anything. I’m just trying to have a conversation here, you know? Be a little friendly? The desert can be a cold and lonely place when you only have yourself and a stick-in-the-mud for company.”

“No one asked you to be  _ friendly.”   _ Kakuzu quickens their pace, tripping as Hidan stops short.

“I did! I’m asking you! You!” Hidan turns to the heavens, hands clasped in overexaggerated piety. “Oh, God, what did I do to deserve a cellmate like him?” Kakuzu roughly tugs on Hidan, almost causing him to fall flat on his face. “Fucker!” 

Bickering, the two jog towards the mesa, keeping an ear out for their pursuers. The grip on Hidan steadily slips from his elbow, to his forearm, then his wrist. By the time they reach the rock formation, those desert hands are clamped down on Hidan’s fingers, radiating enough heat to make him choke. This is the closest they have been since prison, he realizes, bad mood evaporating. Kakuzu sees his giddy, shit-eating grin and bites down an insult. In the adrenaline of the moment, he cannot help but smirk himself. 

They sneak into a cave as the buzzing turns into a dull howl. It is a tight fit for one man, near impossible for two, but Kakuzu makes it work, shoving Hidan against the wall and squishing the other man with his muscle mass.

“You horny?” Hidan breathes into Kakuzu’s throat. He can barely hear himself over the sound of the helicopter motor slicing away at the air outside. “‘Cause I’m down to fuck. Twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, fifty-two weeks per y-”  

Kakuzu stomps on Hidan’s injured foot. “If we’re caught, I’ll castrate you.”

“Liar,” Hidan wheezes, “you’d miss sucking my dick way too much.”

Kakuzu pushes into him even more, and Hidan can  _ feel  _ how much he likes it. Even when he pretends not to.

“We aren’t in prison anymore.” Kakuzu licks his lips underneath the bandana, unseen pinpricks of red rising from the dusty fissures in his skin. “When we cross the border...” 

A gust of sandy air blows into the cave, carrying in a racket of police chatter. The two of them freeze, hearts skipping in beats and measures, lungs stilling. Their knuckles whiten against each other, layering purple bruises over the faded black ink of prison tattoos. When the roar of the helicopter finally leaves, it seems like hours have passed. 

The desert steadily returns to its regularly scheduled programming: Wind howling as it rushes through rock formations, sand shifting and hissing in the arid brush. Animals and insects make small, creeping noises, nearly dead silent as they await the cool twilight hours. 

Within the sanctum of their cave, Hidan can hear nothing but the sound of their blood thrumming through their bodies, can see nothing the furrowed crease between Kakuzu’s green eyes. He is thinking too much again, using the volume of the helicopter to try to calculate the distance between themselves and the fuzz. Or maybe he is adding all the compound interest in his head, like the greedy nerd he is. 

Hidan presses his lips against the center of Kakuzu’s bandana, just over his mouth. A distraction. “Admit it, Kakuzu, I’m the best dream you’ve ever had.” He kisses him several more times, leaving a trail of damp spots on the triangle-shaped cloth.

“More like a nightmare,” Kakuzu snorts, not quite returning the affection. But he does not pull away, and when Hidan spreads his legs, Kakuzu is eager to fill the void. 

“Yeah, sure, whatever you want.” Hidan picks at the cloth knot on the back of the other’s neck, snapping Kakuzu out of his thoughts. “As long as you’re screaming my name, I don’t really care.”

“From what I recall, you were the one screaming. Not me.”

“That’s not what I remember, old man.”

“Idiot.” Letting go of his hand, Kakuzu hitches up Hidan’s injured leg around his back, then leans in until their foreheads are touching. Rough cotton fibers chafe against their cheeks as he talks, “You would lose your head if it weren’t attached to your body.” 

“You’d get it back for me,” Hidan retorts, ignoring the scoff he gets in return. There is warmth there, in that cave. It is a sort of heat that is hotter than the sun itself, a heat which scorches him from his skin to his soul. Lust, desire, a rush of dizziness, and an itch to do more—one he wants to scratch. “And speaking of getting head—” He pecks Kakuzu in quick succession, smiling as Kakuzu grunts and lifts him against the cave wall, palms massaging the underside of his legs. 

The bandana crumples to the floor, and when Hidan laughs, the sound is smothered by a cracked bronze mouth nipping at his bottom lip. The cave walls scrape at his burnt back as they move together, using blood to wet their parched tongues. Kakuzu pulls away far enough to tug off their shirts before returning his fingers to Hidan. His thumbs scrape down his tanlines, Hidan gasping as the other clips a rash of sun poisoning. He stops, frowning.

“You’re hot.”

“Hell yeah I am.”

“You’re not sweating.” 

“Uh, no shit.” Hidan scrunches his face in confusion. Isn’t this a good thing? No sweat, no smell, no problem. “I haven’t sweated in hours.”

“You—” Fury takes over Kakuzu’s features. “You haven’t sweated… for  _ hours _ … and you didn’t think you should tell me?”

“No?”

Hidan yelps as Kakuzu drops him.

“MOTHERFUCKER!” He staggers to the side, pain shooting up his leg.“What the  _ fuck _ Kakuzu! That—that shit HURTS!” 

Kakuzu steps away as Hidan fumbles blindly for him, then collapses in a heap, black spots flickering across his vision. Hidan groans into the sand, then again as he is rolled onto his back, a dry hand against his brow, smouldering like the desert.

“I should have known...” he hears, low, distorted, and as if the words were whispered from miles away. “...have sunstroke… organs boiling…” Kakuzu appears in front of him, impossibly concerned. The black scars on his body blur and extend; Kakuzu comes apart, all disembodied limbs held together by dark strings and loose, black stitches. A mirage.

Four monsters stand at his shoulders, licking their fangs hungrily.

“Don’t let them eat me,” Hidan mutters. “I’m too pretty to be eaten.”

“You’re hallucinating,” one of the monsters says in Kakuzu’s voice.

“Idiot,” the other adds for good measure.

"Way too pretty," a third remarks. 

“That one definitely isn’t real,” Hidan thinks out loud. 

“What isn’t real? Hidan.” A claw tilts his head to the side. Something cold and wet drips against his mouth, Hidan sputtering as water floods his chest. He hears an alarmed “Hidan!”

And then, without reason or cause, the scene changes—bars slam down around them, sandstone walls becoming sharp and grey. The monsters grimace and shrink, flatten and roar, until they are ink pictures on a tan canvas. Hidan blinks.

When he opens his eyes, he is lounging on top of Kakuzu on their old prison cot, one hand tracing the edges of the four mask tattoos on his back, the taste of cum deep in his throat. 

He leans forward, pressing a lazy kiss against one of the masks, and again against one of the tattooed stitches running down his spine. Kakuzu lets out a annoyed grunt, but when Hidan peers over his shoulder to see what he’s reading ( _ The Epic of Gilgamesh _ ), Kakuzu looks pleased—content—as if he weren’t seething in the middle of a desert cave just seconds prior. Hidan, in no hurry to ruin the moment, decides not to question it.

“You’re in a good mood,” Kakuzu offers. He turns to the next page, callouses scratching the ancient paper. 

“The judge finally approved my execution.”

“Really. And there is no chance of appeal?”

“No~pe-!” Hidan replies, chipperly popping his lips. “I’ll be out of your hair in two weeks.” He twirls said hair around his thumb and index finger, tugging on it playfully. Kakuzu tenses underneath him, muscles shifting his tattoos so that the bone white masks are scowling. 

“...I see.” 

“It took so damn long, right?”

Kakuzu reads and rereads the same paragraph and Hidan pretends not to notice, attention now drawn by the sounds of guards dragging a cursing prisoner to isolation. The screams and stomps come and go; yet, beyond those cold bars, no one can be seen. 

There is another scratching noise—this time, not from reading, but a corner of the cot, slippery with sand that should not be there. A scorpion stares up at Hidan, claws snapping open and shut in the dirt. Several others crawl on the walls behind them, watching, listening. The desert trinkles into the once-safe cell, the hot and cruel sun pouring through the barred windows. 

At long last Kakuzu sighs and dog ears his page. “You have a horrible lawyer.” He sets  _ Gilgamesh _ on top of several scorpions clustered on the sheets. They quickly skitter away, one crawling up Kakuzu just as he lays down, burying his head in his elbows. 

Hidan shrugs. “That’s why I hired him.” He mouths his way down Kakuzu’s back, licking a bronze line between his legs. Kakuzu lets out a quiet groan, frigid against Hidan’s lips. 

He is the only cool, refreshing thing in this nightmare of a prison.


	3. Bone Knife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hidan wakes up from his fever dream, and thinks he has been abandoned by his ex-cell mate. He takes it out on the local wildlife, and, later, Kakuzu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets darker as we finally see more of why Hidan is on death row. 
> 
> Some violence against animals; Hidan kills a nest of snakes for no other reason than he can and God demands it.

* * *

 

When Hidan awakens, dust has collected in the hollows of his ribcage. He blinks lazily, staring at the swirls in the rock ceiling, before rolling to the side and knocking over an empty canteen. A sliver of moonlight shines brightly in his face.

“F’ckin’ moon,” he mumbles. “Get outta my face. Try’na sleep.” Kakuzu prefers to travel at night, so he has to nap as much as possible before the bastard comes to wake him up. He listens to the desert night, nodding off at the sound of a serpent slithering on the earth. It’s strange, Hidan thinks. Normally his companion wouldn’t let them camp near anything poisonous.

“Kakuzu? Where are you?” Hidan sits up in a panic, a damp orange cloth slipping from his head to his lap. Using the wall to support his now-bandaged ankle, he stumbles to the mouth of the cave. There, he peeks around the corner of the rock formation, looking left, then right, then up.

No one is around. No one living, anyway.

“We had a deal. I break you out of jail, you get me to the border. Don’t tell me you forgot?”

A pause.

“Kakuzu,  _you cuck!_  You utter shithead! I starved myself for weeks so I could get those keys! Don’t you dare leave me here, you fucker!” He stomps on a boulder, then jumps back as a rattlesnake hisses at him, tail clattering among pebbles. Its golden eyes narrow at Hidan as it coils around its nest protectively.

Hidan matches its gaze, refuses to look away, even as he crouches down low on the ground. His bandaged leg trembles. “Do you know who I am, bitch?” His dirty nails comb through the soil, probing, searching, until—ah. His fingers curl around a sharp stone.

“I am an acolyte of God.” He smiles like a saint, though there is no tone or affect to his voice. “And He has judged you unworthy of this world.”

Blood, blood—that’s the only thing that matters now. Not Kakuzu, who is gone. Not the cops, who will find his corpse. Or won’t, whatever. He takes the dead rattlesnake by the spine, wringing blood and venom out through its crushed skull. When that is empty, he discards the body and scoops up a handful of baby snakes from the nest. Cool tiny scales wriggle between his fingers as the serpents cry silently for their mother. Pitiful. Desperate.

One of the little shits actually  _bites_ him, and dangles precariously by fangs embedded between his index finger and his thumb.

“Heh.” He chuckles, humorlessly. “You’ve got some serious balls.” He sets that one down, watching it squirm away into the darkness.

“As for the rest—” He smashes them between his hands, smearing their guts onto the sand in an interesting shape: a circle with an inverted triangle.

Sitting back on his feet, Hidan reverently traces the symbol. Then his ankle starts to ache again; and so, with a small, joyless twirl, he falls to the ground in a familiar, practiced manner, with the gruesome shape at his back, just under his heart. His stomach flips with some satisfaction as he lies back, staring up at the sky.

Starlight ricochets off the surrounding cliffs, the striped sediment glowing blue and silver in the night. Off to the side, a lone cactus blooms, a bulb of white flesh unfurling into countless petal fingers, all reaching toward the heavens. The Milky Way Galaxy stretches across the horizon, violet-pink light bursting behind towers of cosmic ash. just as surely as Hidan rests upon the earth, God strolls across nebulae, creating. Destroying. Damning.

Hundred of thousands of suns pierce the dark heart of the desert, coalescing into a multiformed body, limbs and faces of the angelic host criticizing his very existence. A stab of guilt nestles into his chest, just under his lungs.

It has been far too long since he has made a decent offering to the Lord.

He plucks the red-splattered rock from the ground. The snake bite twinges as he hugs it to his chest, considering. He presses his thumb into the pointed tip of the stone, and prays.

Hidan is imagining his own skeleton when the sand under him shifts. Ripped prison-orange pants kneel by his side.

“You should be resting,” Kakuzu says, exasperation leaking out from under his bandana. He cooly regards the red smears on the prone body, the dead snakes scattered around it.

Hidan does not react as his companion sits next to him, carrying a bone-knife in one hand and several prickly plants in the crook of his arm. He grabs one of the leaves and slides the blade down its spine, lifting the thick skin away from the glimmering flesh underneath. The slicing movement catches Hidan’s eye, but his purple stare slips away. He whispers until he has nothing left to say to God.

With a barely-there sigh, Hidan sits up, resting his arms on his knees. Half-burying his face into his elbows, he watches Kakuzu pull out another leaf, skinning it with ease. Then another.

“That’s a pretty nice knife,” Hidan states flatly. “Did you make it yourself?”

“Yes.” Kakuzu guts another one of the strange plants. “From the coyote you killed.”

“Oh. Cool.” Hidan remembers, distantly, standing tall and triumphant over the corpse, having stabbed a piece of metal debris into the side of its throat. Later, Kakuzu had removed the fur and roasted the coyote over a bonfire. ‘Like a wife,’ Hidan had said, ‘but one that doesn’t put out.’ He was smacked for that.

“Can I have it?” he asks. “The knife.”

Kakuzu scans the rock, clenched between Hidan’s knuckles, and the dark shape on the sand, still wet with blood and venom. He shakes his head. “That would be a horrible idea.”

“You sure?” Hidan taps the rock on his knee in a steady rhythm. “Are you really, really sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“Meh.” Another tap, this one near bruising. “Maybe later, then.”

The knife stops as Kakuzu sets aside the plant, moving to hollow out its inner core, a clear gelatinous goop with a bitter smell. Hidan raises a disgusted eyebrow.

“I’m not eating that, you know.”

“Aloe vera is not for eating,” Kakuzu pointedly explains. “It’s medicinal. For a certain sunburnt dumbass who dislikes clothes.”

“Some of your native voodoo… shit. Whatever. Still not eating it.”

“You don’t have to,” Kakuzu repeats, now with some frustration. “Now shut up and lie down.”

Hidan doesn’t budge.

Behind his companion’s back, the desert stirs.  _Who?_ An ivory face appears from the background—eyes wide, nose pointed, side horns. It seems a second away from opening its maw, revealing thousands of glittering teeth.  _Who, who?_

Kakuzu tries again, this time louder, more stern. “Lie. Down.”

This disturbs the illusion. The face bursts from the darkness in a burst of tan feathers, gliding over the two ex-prisoners.

Hidan tracks its movement until it disappears over a nearby ridge, the red stone slipping from his fingers and into the sand below. Kakuzu immediately tosses it away before his companion can protest, and the the two somberly listen to it clatter in the shadow of the mesa, the sharp noise echoing throughout.

“Hidan.” Kakuzu grabs his shoulder.

“What?”

“I’m going to push you down now.”

“…”

“Hidan?”

“Don’t care. Do what you want.”

With that, Kakuzu forces him to the ground, pausing slightly as Hidan does not resist the touch.

“Hey, ‘kuzu.” His stony expression turns up, purple eyes staring through his companion. “Am I hallucinating?”

His companion gives him a sharp look, mouth pulled down at the edges. “No. Your fever is gone. You’re fine.”

“I’m fine,” Hidan parrots. “But I thought you left. I don’t feel fine. I feel…”

“Tired? Thirsty?” Kakuzu prods some of his sunburn. “Hurt?”

Hidan’s brow twitches in irritation.

 _“_ Don’t interrupt me, asshole. I feel bad.  _Bad._ I thought you left, and I feel really. Fucking. Bad… man…” he trails off with something nonsensical.

Kakuzu lets him ramble. Setting aside the knife, he passes the time by scooping the thick sap out of the aloe vera leaves.

When at last Hidan is done talking, Kakuzu sets down the plant and checks his temperature. Hidan shivers against his palm, and covers it up with a grimace. “Your hands are absolute ice, shithead.”

“The temperature drops after sunset. You know this—” Hidan cuts Kakuzu off before he starts to lecture.

“I thought you left me,” he says crossly, words dripping from his tongue like acid. Hidan swallows the irritation, and it sinks into his stomach, mixing with the earlier rage to create a toxic fume that stings his eyes with salt. “You fucker. You  _left_ me. I thought I was—that I was just gonna be another fucking dead body you dumped in the desert, and I ran out here and I—I screamed, and you didn’t fucking  _answer_ —”

“And give away our position? Of course not.”

A beat of silence passes between them, awkward and heavy. Underneath Kakuzu, Hidan’s face has gone blank. Then his fingers curl into the sand, grit sticking under his nails. Hidan grinds his teeth so fiercely that Kakuzu, hand still on his forehead, can feel a vein pulsing.

It’s the only warning he gets before Hidan flings sand at his face, blinding him.

Kakuzu recoils with a cut-off yell, clawing at his eyes. Hidan follows it up with a tackle, sending the two rolling backwards, down a dusty hill, limbs flying everywhere as they grapple with each other. Hidan cries out as he falls onto a cluster of cacti, but quickly recovers, swinging an elbow at Kakuzu’s throat and only managing to clip him in the jaw.

“I should’ve killed you a long time ago,” he hisses, jabbing his knee up. Kakuzu slaps away his leg and Hidan screams as he is shoved him down onto the cacti.

Kakuzu wraps his hands around Hidan’s neck and squeezes. “I’m going to kill you  _now.”_

“Fuck—” Hidan pounds a fist against Kakuzu’s back to no avail. He starts clawing at the other’s wrists. “Fuck you! Let m-me go! Let m— _!_ ” Hidan gurgles as Kakuzu thrusts a thumb into his trachea. Gasping airlessly, he spits up at Kakuzu, a glob of saliva landing on his bandana.

Kakuzu glowers down at him, the whites of his eyes red from irritation. Hidan matches his fury with anger of his own, glare watery yet determined.

Spots flit across his vision as air slowly leaves him, needles piercing ever deeper into his spine. His movements grow calmer, sluggish, tugging uselessly at Kakuzu’s scratched wrists; then, at long last, his arms fall limp.

Hidan is on the verge of unconsciousness when Kakuzu finally loosens his stranglehold. He inhales greedily, then coughs up a storm.

“Are you done yet?” Kakuzu asks, hands still on Hidan’s throat. His hair hangs around his face limply, obscuring everything but his crimson stare.

“Yeah, I’m,” Hidan rasps, then coughs again. He shifts his hips between Kakuzu’s legs, seeking contact, a reaffirmation that Kakuzu was really there. “Yeah, I’m good.  _If—_ ” he quickly adds, “And only  _if_ … you promise not to leave me again.”

“Then we’re done here.” Kakuzu abruptly releases him, moving to get up. Hidan grabs his shirt and yanks him back down, bringing them face-to-face.

“I fucking mean it, Kakuzu,” he growls. The cacti dig into his shoulders. “Promise me. Promise me that you won’t leave.  _When_  I die, you gotta take my body with you. Out of this godforsaken desert. Some place tropical, I don’t give a shit. Anywhere you go, I go too. And when God brings me back to life—and He will! He will!” Hidan quickly adds, scowling when Kakuzu rolls his eyes. “And when the end of times comes, He will cast off these fleshsuits, freeing us from the suffering of this mortal coil…”

“Ridiculous.” Kakuzu murmurs, breath warming Hidan through the bandana. “I’ll kill you myself and leave you here to rot. And if your god resurrects you, I’ll kill you again.”

“ _Bullshit!_ ”

“That’s a promise.”

“Kill me all you want. It won’t work,” Hidan snaps. His teeth click desperately. “What about leaving me, huh?”

“If I really wanted you gone, I would have let you get the electric chair!” He takes hold of Hidan and peels him away from his shirt, stalling at the sight of his hands. The swollen bite marks on his peachy flesh stands in stark contrast to the inflamed scratches on Kakuzu. “You…”

Kakuzu hesitates, and Hidan takes the chance to snatch the other, weaving their fingers together.

“‘You,’” Hidan mocks. He yelps as Kakuzu’s grip becomes crushing.

“You may be dying sooner than expected,” Kakuzu states flatly. “If the venom doesn’t get you, I will.”

“Calm your fucking tits, man—it was just a baby. And besides,” Hidan throws him a grin, gleaming like the discarded bone-knife higher on the ridge. “I’d let you drag me to hell if it means you’ll be mine.”


End file.
